To commemorate The Bold and the Beautiful’s 28th anniversary last Wednesday, executive producer and headwriter Bradley P. Bell staged a daytime soap cliffhanger that is the shock of the soap century: revealing that Maya Avant (Karla Mosley) is really Myron, a transgender person. She was born a man.

You go, Bradley!

Karla Mosley: Her Maya Avant revealed to be transgender

Maya is a model at Forrester Creations and the live-in love of Rick Forrester (Jacob Young). The couple currently hosts the Forrester Mansion. It was in the living room at the end of last Wednesday’s episode that Maya’s sister Nicole (Reign Edwards) told Maya that she is not her sister but her brother. Wowsa! What a beginning to a storyline! The episode trended on Twitter immediately! B&B had managed to keep this stunning reveal top secret. Miraculously, there had been absolutely no spoilers!

Maya/Myron is not daytime’s first transgender character, contrary to what The Daily Mail (England’s gossipy newspaper/website) reported this week. That honor belongs to Azure C (Carlotta Chang) on The City. And then there’s Zarf /Zoe on All My Children. I loved Wendy Mercury (played by herself) the transgender bartender on One Life to Live. The great and mighty headwriter Claire Labine (Ryan’s Hope, General Hospital) created Wendy in 1997 in collaboration with her sub-writer children Eleanor Mancusi and Matthew Labine.

In real life, Wendy was/is an opera singer who back then acted by day and performed by night at an infamous drag club and restaurant on the Lower East Side of Manhattan called Lucky Chang’s. She is just superb!

Maya/Myron is of course an homage to Myra Breckinridge, the 1968 novel by the late Gore Vidal that became a movie in 1970. Vidal was a noted author, playwright, satirist, raconteur and television personality with a taste for the flamboyantly shocking. His sexually explicit, luridly campy tale of a man who becomes a woman amid the sleazy culture of behind-the-scenes Hollywood was considered high scandal in its day.

Myra/Myron was film’s first transgender person, played in the equally explicit and truly awful movie version (some say the worst film of all time) by Raquel Welch, then hottest thing on the screen. It also co-starred the iconic Mae West (“Come up and see me sometime”) as Letitia Van Allen, a sexually voracious Hollywood agent with a four-poster bed in her office. It was the first movie for a very young and hunky Tom Selleck, before he made his breakthrough soap role on The Young and the Restless as Jed Andrews during that soap’s premiere year, 1973. In the movie, Selleck was billed simply as “Stud.”

Y&R was the first soap to focus on young people. It was co-created by the late legendary Bill Bell and his wife Lee Phillip Bell. They are the parents of Bill Jr, Bradley and Lauralee (Christine/Cricket Williams) and the co-creators of B&B as a spinoff to Y&R in 1987.

Raquel Welch as Myra Breckinridge

Of course Vidal’s Myra/Myron was created to sell the novel and the movie. She was a phenomenon of the late 60s just as the as mores of Hollywood were quickly changing. Old taboos were falling everywhere, and the book and movie were emblematic of a new era of sexual explicitness that would have seemed impossible just a few short years earlier. Myra/Myron, book and movie, brought in audiences by the zillions, just as Vidal planned.

And that’s exactly what Bradley P. Bell and CBS Daytime want Maya as a her/him to do for B&B, which already is the most popular soap opera worldwide. B&B doesn’t need to do this. But they did it. How high will the ratings spike for this week? For B&B, CBS and Bradley Bell, the sky is the limit!

This is not to disparage the subject of transgender identity and the very real issues it poses for many people who want and deserve society’s respect. GLAAD, the leading advocate in the media for gays, lesbians and transgender people, has come forward in support of this ostensibly ground-breaking storyline. Okay, but with all due respect to this worthy organization, this is not really such a groundbreaker for soaps. It will succeed or fail in proportion to how genuinely sensitive and realistic it is. Otherwise, it’s just another stunt.

In decades, I’ve rarely raved about a single storyline.But the Rick-Maya-Caroline imbroglio that has played out over the last month or so has just been superb.It’s a can’t-miss-a-daytale of betrayal, ambition, narcissism and, above all, surprise.

Eric Forrester decided he wanted to take a year off and wanted Rick to take over as CEO of Forrester Creations.But he would only give Rick the reigns if Rick would reconcile with his wife Caroline. Rick complied, nominally, even though he had caught Caroline sharing a few innocent kisses with his brother Ridge. However, unbeknownst to anyone, Rick was carrying on an affair with his ex, Maya, Forrester’s lead model who is an ex-con and a major, major gold digger.

Rick had the company ownership transfer papers drawn up and just after Eric signed them, Rick revealed to everyone — especially a stunned Caroline — that he was still carrying on with Maya and wanted to run the company with her as his partner. Newly in power, Rick moved Maya into the Forrester mansion, replacing Stephanie’s over-the-mantle portrait with one of Maya.Caroline was left reeling, and so far has not stopped begging Rick to come back to her.

The real appeal of this story is that it was produced with something rare on today’s soap operas: genuine surprise. Caroline and Ridge — and the audience — were shocked during the revealing scene in which Rick announced he was going to run the company openly with his mistress.Caroline’s surprise and anguish were especially poignant.And the betrayed father Eric lit into son Rick with a fury.

Of course the success of a storyline like this has a lot to do with the acting. I’ve always thought of Karla Mosley (Maya) as a good to average actress, but she has been wonderful here, the kind of wonderful that invites an acting award nomination. Jacob Young has been great as always as the scheming, betraying husband.But the superstar among stars here is Linsey Godfrey as the betrayed wife Caroline.Beneath the grief and the shock, Godfrey finds strength that is as touching as it is admirable, and you can’t help but to root for her to get her husband back.

And the fun of this storyline isn’t nearly over. There’s still lots to play.Will Caroline persist in her efforts to get Rick back or just give up?Can Maya live peacefully with her conscience? Will she ever develop a sense of guilt out of stealing another woman’s husband?Will Rick stay with Maya or, underneath it all, does he still love his legal wife Caroline?It’s a great story, and I’m staying tuned.

Every soap opera needs a leading man. But perhaps because Ridge Forrester seems to have been at the center of most plots since The Bold and the Beautiful debuted more than 25 years ago, he seems more like a Master of the Universe than just a plain leading man.

Born handsome and rich, the son of Eric and Stephanie Forrester (Massimo Marone, an old lover of Stephanie’s, is Ridge’s biological father) Ridge has always had everything he wanted. His father Eric is head of Forrester Creations, a leading couture house, and he himself is the fashion house’s leading designer.

Ridge’s problem has always been women. Is it just because he is so attractive? It seems that he’s always involved with two women at a time, whether it’s Valley Girl Brooke and the late Caroline Spencer (his late first wife) or Brooke and Taylor, another wife of his. Taylor, a beautiful psychiatrist, seemed to at least understand Ridge. His attraction to Brooke, to whom he has been married three times, seems more physical, and the two certainly have had quite the tumultuous romance over the years.

Ridge was played by Ronn Moss from the role’s inception to 2012, when Moss suddenly left. Ridge and Brooke broke up over the thinnest of pretexts (Ridge found a text message from Brooke’s former lover Deacon) and Ridge went to live in Paris. During that year, Stephanie suffered from cancer, and later died of the disease. Ridge, a huge momma’s boy, didn’t even return for his mother’s funeral.

When Ridge did return at the end of last year, he was played by Englishman Thorsten Kaye, a fan favorite from his days on One Life to Live and All My Children. Kaye is of course a very different kind of actor from Moss, who seemed to own the role. Kaye’s Ridge is more introspective, but with his own Continental style delivers a Ridge who is just as much the self-absorbed, immature jerk he’s always been. And as always, Kaye is a treat to watch.

Thus when the new Ridge returned, he seemed to be the perfect man, suddenly very soft and tender, especially sympathetic toward Brooke’s sister Katie. Katie’s husband Bill had fallen in love with and run off with Brooke. Bill and Ridge hate one another. Ridge seemed to be Katie’s knight in shining armor and the two made off together, even after Ridge initially almost married Brooke. Right now, the two are having an idyllic romance and indeed Kaye and Heather Tom, who plays Katie, are probably the best acted couple in soapdom.

So it was a brilliant stroke when B&B shattered the image of the new perfect Ridge and had him make some moves at Forrester Creations that showed how arrogant and spoiled he could be. He tried to have photographer Oliver fired and brother Rick ousted from his position as president of the company. Both moves failed.

Eric offered him the presidency of the company should he and Katie break up. But arrogant and wanting his way as always, Ridge refused. Will Ridge Forrester be able to keep his new love Katie, and continue to have it all as B&B’s Master of the Universe?

For more than 25 years, the main story of The Bold and the Beautiful has been the story of the love life of Brooke Logan Forrester (fascinatingly played by Katherine Kelly Lang) . She’s been married to all the Forresters — Eric, Thorne and Ridge –and is the mother of five children. When it came time to die from cancer, Stephanie Forrester chose Brooke’s arms to die in.

Brooke has been such a good soap heroine because her life is centered on what soaps are all about: love. To Brooke, love is all. Whoever she has sex with she must be in love with. And because she believes love is her fate, she believes any of her actions toward that end are justified.

Armed with the nobility of that motivation, Brooke has gained much in life. She became a top scientist and later designer at Forrester Creations, inventor of the Belief fabric formula and lead designer of Brooke’s Bedroom, a line of luxe lingerie. When she became Mrs. Eric Forrester, she became rich and famous at a very young age.

But it’s her continuous love affair with Ridge Forrester that has dominated her life. A young girl when she met him, she set her sights on him immediately even though he was involved with and later married Caroline Spencer Forrester. Though men came and went in her life, it was always the love of Ridge she sought — and won and lost many times. The two have been married three times.

Because Brooke believes nothing she does is wrong, she has trespassed often on the lives of many around her. She fell in love with her daughter Bridget’s husband Nick Marone. She fell in love with her sister’s Katie’s husband Bill Spencer and had a torrid affair with him.

But right now everything that Brooke has stood for and believed is coming apart. She was set to remarry Ridge when her maid of honor Katie fainted in the middle of the ceremony. It turns out that Katie, who had been so harmed by Brooke when Brooke fell in love with her husband Bill, is now in love with Ridge. And Ridge is in love with Katie.

Now that Brooke is finally faced with what she can’t have – namely Ridge, the once inevitable “fate” of her love — it may be time for her to take a good look at herself. What is it about her that she has been able to steal so many other women’s men? How will she survive now that Katie has stolen her man. Will Broke ever change and see the errors of her ways ? Will she once again wrest Ridge from another women’s once arms?